Collect BBB Business Listings with Apify to Google Sheets

Automatically collect BBB business listings with Apify and import them into Google Sheets

This n8n workflow runs a bounded Better Business Bureau (BBB) search using Apify’s BBB Advanced Scraper, then writes the resulting business listings into Google Sheets—updating existing rows by BBB profile URL and logging each import run for replay and recovery.

What this workflow does

• Starts manually and reads your configured search term, location, distance, target Google Sheets spreadsheet ID, optional Apify resume run ID, and a maximum Apify charge.
• Connects to Google Sheets to validate the destination spreadsheet, create required tabs if missing, and acquire a temporary lock to prevent concurrent imports.
• Resumes or starts an Apify run: either resumes the specified Actor run using the Apify resume run ID, or starts a new bounded run of Apify BBB Advanced Scraper with your search parameters and charge cap.
• Checkpoints and polling: saves a “PROCESSING” checkpoint for the run in the Google Sheets run log, then polls Apify until the Actor run succeeds.
• Downloads and normalizes results: retrieves the completed Apify dataset, validates item count limits, normalizes fields, and deduplicates businesses by BBB profile URL.
• Writes and updates rows: inserts new businesses and updates existing ones, then saves an import summary in “BBB Runs.” Replaying an imported run preserves its successful log entry.
• Releases the lock and returns a summary of the import.

Use cases

• Build and refresh a lead list from BBB profiles for a specific market using search term + location + distance.
• Maintain a master “BBB Businesses” sheet that updates over time rather than duplicating entries.
• Operationally safe scraping: checkpointed runs and replay capability to recover from failed executions.

Technical details

• Apify integration: uses the official @apify/n8n-nodes-apify node(s) with your Apify API credential for the BBB Advanced Scraper.
• Google Sheets: OAuth2 authentication and import destination validation.
• Workflow nodes: if, set, code, sticky note, http request, and manual trigger.